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Young Oscar nominee loves acting

By: Becky Kover

The Columbus Dispatch - January 25, 2013 02:57 PM

Jordan Strauss/Invision/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Quvenzhane Wallis

By Nicole Sperling

LOS ANGELES TIMES

Quvenzhane Wallis is excited to be an Oscar nominee, primarily because it
gives her the chance to meet some movie actors. Yet, when pressed, the 9-year-old star of
Beasts of the Southern Wild says it’s the stars of her favorite television shows
Jessie and
Austin and Ally that are most appealing to her.

"I want to meet everybody on Disney Channel and Disney XD that are
alive," she said in a recent phone interview.

Wallis and
Beasts had been critical favorites since last year’s Sundance Film Festival. But the film
-- which so far has grossed about $11 million at the box office -- wasn’t widely known in
mainstream circles until the Oscar nominations were announced.
Beasts received four nominations, including best picture and director, and a lead
actress nod for Wallis, a resident of Houma, La., and the youngest actress ever to be nominated for
an Academy Award.

Wallis celebrated her historical recognition at the recent Critics’
Choice Awards, where she won the best young actress prize. She said she especially enjoyed the
party following the show, where she danced with her mom and her brothers, dressed in a sparkly
purple gown.

Only 5 when she auditioned for the role of Hushpuppy in
Beasts, Wallis says that she wanted to act even before she made her first movie, because,
"I get to meet different directors and different people."

Wallis says she wants to continue acting but also plans to stay in her
school. The fourth-grader said some of her friends back home have seen her PG-13 debut. "Two of my
friends have seen it," she said. "They said I did good."

Wallis herself has watched the movie nine times. Her favorite parts: "I like it whenever I’m
eating seafood and whenever Walrus falls off the trailer," she says, referring to one of the
colorful residents of the Bathtub, a fictional town in Louisiana that’s been cut off from the world
after a storm causes a break in a levee.